Booher: The beard? Actually, Motte's got a better story

Of course everybody wants to talk about the beard. And that's understandable. It's cool in a ZZ Top kind of way, with the guy having a personality to match.

But if you're taking the kids to see big-leaguer Jason Motte pitch today as he begins his comeback trail at Hammons Field, kneel down and point to something else that's far cooler.

See the colorful bands on his left wrist? Those represent cancer patients whom Motte met in the past year. Some are no longer with us.

"This is my buddy Brant Ballinger. I got to become really close to him and his family last year. He passed away July 23 of last year. A 9-year-old boy," the St. Louis Cardinals power reliever said outside the Springfield clubhouse on Friday. "Out in my truck, I probably have another 30, 40 of them.

"It's a daily reminder that there's stuff bigger than this game of baseball going on."

Anybody else got a tear in their eye, too?

However, that's not written simply from hearing of Motte's stories of other cancer patients fighting the good fight.

No, it's that Motte's return today to Springfield — where he was briefly part of the inaugural 2005 club as a catcher, later to return as a lockdown reliever in 2007 — offers one important message:

He gets it.

Motte left here seven years ago, made it big but also came of age and found a cause. It's notable because of where he was years ago, something we'll get to in a second.

Just quickly, know this: While on the mend from elbow surgery last summer, Motte and his bride Caitlin started the Jason Motte Foundation, whose motto is "Let's Strike Out Cancer." They also offer T-shirts emblazoned with a backward "K," the entry in your scorebook for a strikeout.

In essence, Motte turned a couple of negatives into a positive. His wife's grandfather died of cancer, and now the backward K T-shirts are all over Major League Baseball. And it came as he was on the mend from elbow surgery last summer, when he was quarantined from pitching.

"It all happens for a reason. When I did this, I never asked why," Motte said, referring to his elbow injury in spring training 2013, a year after he was the National League co-leader in saves (42) and two years after he was the fill-in closer on St. Louis' World Series winner.

"The stuff I got to do last year, whether it was spend time with my family or get to know these other people who were battling cancer, I would never had the time. There was stuff I got to do while the team was on the road while I was back in St. Louis.

"You never want to say it's a good thing you got hurt. But it showed that everything happens for a reason."

This is the Motte that few people really see. For years, his public persona is as the jokester, always with a smile on his face and a good comeback line behind it. That's why he's so beloved. And it's genuine.

But his strikeout cancer effort should show other athletes that you really can make something of your celebrity.

That's what you hope of the minor leaguers passing through here. They're all in their early to mid-20s and have yet to really experience life, and so you hope they seize the moment off the field as they become husbands and dads or run into others who are down in life.

Motte was once among those care-free farmhands, albeit with one of the best storylines ever to emerge from the Cardinals farm — he is a former minor league catcher who made it big on the mound, thanks to a fastball that seemed to run on jet fuel.

In fact, it was Memorial Day weekend 2006 when the News-Leader broke the story of his conversion while he was learning a new craft in Class A ball. The news appeared in a small notes package and under the subheadline, "Now pitching … the catcher."

From there, Motte built momentum.

A year later, he emerged as the set-up man and later the closer of Springfield's first Texas League playoff team, with the back end of the bullpen featuring three future, impact big-leaguers in Kyle McClellan, Motte and Chris Perez.

The team plaque still rests on a wall near the clubhouse here. Some 19 players from 2007 eventually made it to the majors.

"I was looking at the plaque and at the people on that ballclub and it was like, 'Big leagues, big leagues, big leagues, nope, big leagues, big leagues,'" Motte said. "We had Nick Webber down here. He didn't make it to the big leagues, but, man, he was fun to watch, a big righty throwing nasty sinkers. Zach Zuercher. We had (Mitchell Boggs) starting. We had (Allen) Craig. It was one of those teams that was like, 'holy mackerel'."

That team showed what could be of St. Louis' minor league system. Some 80 Springfield players have gone on to the big leagues from here, some with bigger impacts than others.

Motte especially.

Kary Booher, Sunday Sports Editor, can be reached at 836-1180 or by email at kbooher@news-leader.com. He's on Twitter at @karybooherNL.